Ubuntu: Moving only MP3 files out of your iTunes Library

So you decided to leave behind all that old iTunes baggage, and start a DRM free life. However, you have your iTunes DRMed content and your mp3 collection all in your iTunes tree. Using rsync and cleanlinks we can get around this.

Rsync will provide the file copy part of this migration; however, it leaves empty folders behind. Cleanlinks will scan for those empty folders and remove them. Rsync should be installed by default, but cleanlinks is not. So first we need to install that.

sudo apt-get install xutils-dev

There are a few other tools in xutils-dev, but cleanlinks is the most important one for this operation.

Okay now to copy the data to a good place. I have the data on an external drive just a direct copy of my Music folder from Winblows.

rsync -a --progress --include '*/' --include '*.mp3' --exclude '*' /media/ExternalDrive/Music/iTunes/iTunes\ Media/Music/ /home/username/Music/

This will output something like the following:

blink-182/Take Off Your Pants and Jacket/13 Please Take Me Home.mp3
7430452 100% 9.87MB/s 0:00:00 (xfer#2032, to-check=14/3559)
iTunes U/
iTunes U/WWDC 2010 Session Videos - HD/
papercranes/
papercranes/VIDALIA/
t.A.T.u_/
t.A.T.u_/200 KM_H in the Wrong Lane/
t.A.T.u_/200 KM_H in the Wrong Lane/01 Not Gonna Get Us.mp3
10489372 100% 9.36MB/s 0:00:01 (xfer#2033, to-check=10/3559)
t.A.T.u_/200 KM_H in the Wrong Lane/02 All the Things She Said.mp3
8566324 100% 26.10MB/s 0:00:00 (xfer#2034, to-check=9/3559)
t.A.T.u_/200 KM_H in the Wrong Lane/03 Show Me Love.mp3
10232548 100% 16.10MB/s 0:00:00 (xfer#2035, to-check=8/3559)
t.A.T.u_/200 KM_H in the Wrong Lane/04 30 Minutes.mp3
7899208 100% 9.00MB/s 0:00:00 (xfer#2036, to-check=7/3559)
t.A.T.u_/200 KM_H in the Wrong Lane/05 How Soon Is Now_.mp3
7833436 100% 7.07MB/s 0:00:01 (xfer#2037, to-check=6/3559)
t.A.T.u_/200 KM_H in the Wrong Lane/06 Clowns (Can You See Me Now_).mp3
7689364 100% 26.19MB/s 0:00:00 (xfer#2038, to-check=5/3559)
t.A.T.u_/200 KM_H in the Wrong Lane/07 Malchik Gay.mp3
7578700 100% 14.40MB/s 0:00:00 (xfer#2039, to-check=4/3559)
t.A.T.u_/200 KM_H in the Wrong Lane/08 Stars.mp3
9924568 100% 12.07MB/s 0:00:00 (xfer#2040, to-check=3/3559)
t.A.T.u_/200 KM_H in the Wrong Lane/09 Ya Shosla S Uma.mp3
8583028 100% 7.95MB/s 0:00:01 (xfer#2041, to-check=2/3559)
t.A.T.u_/200 KM_H in the Wrong Lane/10 Nas Ne Dagoniat.mp3
10486240 100% 30.21MB/s 0:00:00 (xfer#2042, to-check=1/3559)
t.A.T.u_/200 KM_H in the Wrong Lane/11 Show Me Love [Extended Version].mp3
12322636 100% 17.33MB/s 0:00:00 (xfer#2043, to-check=0/3559)

sent 17202695150 bytes received 42974 bytes 26774689.69 bytes/sec
total size is 20860754880 speedup is 1.21


Now we need to clean up the deadwood empty directories.

cd /home/username/Music
cleanlinks

Now you should have a lovely directory structure full of your mp3s without any iTunes drmed music or content. I will not cover how to break the drm on those old itunes files, but many winblows tools are available. I suggest slowly getting what you can from the Ubuntu One Music store or Amazon!